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One of the biggest questions I get from women who want to build a portfolio career is how to balance everything.
I don’t have a golden answer, like just do this ONE thing and everything will fall into place.
BUT what I do know is that while we all have the same hours in a day, some people are building out systems and processes to move faster.
And that’s how I try to approach it.
My StrengthsFinder #2 strength is being an "Arranger", which means I'm good at figuring out how the pieces and resources can be arranged for maximum productivity.
Looking back, it makes sense.
One summer, I was an unpaid intern at State Farm (why I thought this would look good on my resume is beyond me…).
There was a friendly contest where we were racing to see who could quote the most auto insurance policies (lol).
I used to be pretty competitive, so naturally I had to figure out how to win.
While I technically was taught to quote policies a certain way, I found shortcuts to make myself faster. I practiced those keyboard shortcuts and yes, I won that $25 gift card 😆
As it translates to my business, I have spent many late hours going down rabbit holes—watching YouTube videos and building tools/“shortcuts” to save me time.
Sometimes it’s saved me loads of time. Other times I got excited, built something and then never came back to it (oops).
A few of the things I've set up myself:
*note: Some of these are affiliate links where I get a small payout at no cost to you
A zap* where whenever someone books a career strategy call with me via Calendly, they automatically get added to my Notion CRM and to my email list
A scheduled task in Claude that helps color code my calendar at the beginning of each week (needed for my ADHD brain and when you’re running in multiple personal/client calendars)
When a new client signs on with me 1:1, a Google Drive folder is created, which stores their contract and any future “homework”
An automated weekly task that takes my Granola* notes and adds them to my Notion CRM, plus updates the status
A dashboard that aggregates my analytics from LinkedIn and Instagram
(there’s so much more I could add here)
The crazy thing is…a lot of this didn’t exist at the beginning of the year.
I didn’t even start using Claude until a few months ago.
So no, you're not behind! AI is just moving at a unsustainable pace, and I'm trying to share what I've picked up on my own.
If you’re trying to create more space in your business, I’m sharing:
Three questions I ask myself when I’m thinking about automating something new
A Capacity Assessment template to determine what tasks you can delegate to a Virtual Assistant
A step-by-step tutorial of how to automate the booking > CRM workflow mentioned above 👆